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Ponca City, We Love You writes "The NY Times reports that farmers and ranchers oppose a government program to identify livestock with microchip tags that would allow the computerized recording of livestock movements from birth to the slaughterhouse. Proponents of the USDA's National Animal Identification System say that computer records of cattle movements mean that when a cow is discovered with bovine tuberculosis or mad cow disease, its prior contacts can be swiftly traced. Ranchers say the extra cost of the electronic tags places an onerous burden on a teetering industry. Small groups of cattle are often rounded up in distant spots and herded into a truck by a single person who could not simultaneously wield the hand-held scanner needed to record individual animal identities. The ranchers also note that there is no Internet connection on many ranches for filing to a regional database. 'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms. The notion of centralized data banks, even for animals, has also set off alarms among libertarians who oppose NAIS. One group has issued a bumper sticker that reads, 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon.' 'They can't comprehend the vastness of a ranch like this,' says Jay Platt, the third-generation owner of a 22,000 acre New Mexico ranch. 'This plan is expensive, it's intrusive, and there's no need for it.'"

Markets don't work without transparency, if people are fine eating GMO fine, but they should be able to, but it shouldn't infringe on the right of other people to not eat it. I see no reason why beef is any different in that respect.

You do have a right to know where your beef comes from every step of the way...if you're willing to pay for it. If enough people buy meat that has been tracked, all ranchers will track their cows so as to remain competitive. THAT is how markets work (see the bulk of dairy prod

True, but there are some states right now, TX and another one (Montana?) that are constructing laws to challenge this...something along the lines of handguns manufactured, stamped 'for in state sale/use only' or something, and defying any Federal gun regulations on the manufacture or sale of them. Should prove an interesting challenge.

CO2 is not a pollutant. We have real pollution we should be dealing with, that would actually have a deterministic impact on improving the environment. Instead, some want this giant new market for Wall Street to play around in that will most likely increase the US dependence on imports.

Then you're also supporting some huge new "track every edible product everywhere" scheme, which is nothing but a boon to giant corporate farming that will kill off farmer's markets and roadside vegetable/fruit stands (not to mention small sales at small farms). You know, place where you actually buy food from the people that pulled it out of the ground.

Nothing ever changes. This is the exact argument that they made in the 1900's when the FDA was first trying to reduce the number of human body parts that made it into canned meat: "Waaaaaa, you're going to put us out of business! Waaaaaaaa, no one could ever collect this much information!"

I call BS. If I stole a cow from one of those giant farms, the damn rancher'd be able to identify it in a second, but the instant you want to track something for public safety reasons, "there is no way they could ever collect that information."

Did he work alone? Ever? I remember trying to single handedly round up cattle for transport, even to fairs, back when I was growing up. No way in hell I could get them in a wagon by myself, let alone scan them while trying to keep them loading on. Plus then of course you have to take into account the cost of the scanner, internet connectivity, consumables (tags), it IS a lot of administrative burden. A lot of farmers in our area have themselves, maybe one kid helping them, and that's it.

The article is wrong. Your supposed to scan them and report it before they leave your property. Under the law, if you sell a few head to your neighbor, you are required to scan and report it. If you take a bull to the neighbors for a little work, you have to report it.

If the animal goes anywhere other then where the government thinks it is, you have to report it.

Now you may think this is for tacking diseases, truth be told, the reason animals sit at feed lots is because they have to have a FDA regulated period of healthy time and if the farm isn't already FDA regulated, then the trip to the feed lots allow the monitoring required. This plan is more about the entire barter system and taxation in which small farmers trade stud services for fence mending on shared properties and so on. That is unless you take the animals to a non-FDA inspected processing facility. They want all of that recorded as income now do you can be taxed on it. The entire process does pose some serious technical issues too, My neighbor doesn't even know how to use a computer and has over 1000 head, I have roughly 35- soon to be 40. Swine is tracked also, for much of the same reasons.

Here is the funny part, there are already numbered tags on the animals which can be used to track them. There is no need for this program. The monitoring in the healthy period regulation can show when sick animals arrive. If that isn't working, then a RFID tag isn't going to fix it. This is nothing more then wanting to know exactly where the animals go so they can tax potential revenue sources even when the revenue is a bale of hay.

Here is the funny part, there are already numbered tags on the animals which can be used to track them. There is no need for this program. The monitoring in the healthy period regulation can show when sick animals arrive. If that isn't working, then a RFID tag isn't going to fix it. This is nothing more then wanting to know exactly where the animals go so they can tax potential revenue sources even when the revenue is a bale of hay.

That, and, I promise you this, some congressmen on an agricultural subcommit

Actually, the giant farms would probably not be as difficult. Large farms have more people, many of whom probably do not work as much as the few people per small farm. They have economies of scale on larger farms, which means that if there is another administrative hurdle to cross, they already have a person on staff to deal with it, and it is probably their job. On a small farm, administration is time taken out of the other work time of the operational staff of the farm. Even a small amount of additional administration and regulation can turn into an issue.

For those of you who understand the concepts, this regulation basically represents a flat percentage of extra effort; in taxes, we call that a regressive tax. You must spend the same amount of time to tag a steer on a small farm as a large farn, but like the poor vs. rich in the tax scenario, the rich can absorb a flat percentage without being really hurt by it.

Now I am not saying that the tagging idea is impossible, but somehow you will have to account for the extra adminstrative time required out of people who already work from dawn to dusk and beyond every day just staying afloat. Their position is 100% valid, even if you think its "not all that expensive". Work is work, tags cost a unit price, and God help you if your report on so-and-so shipment was messed up, because it's all your fault when the government comes knocking to fine you.

A lot of people in the US get upset with mega-corporations, but they forget that massive regulation requires an investment of time from the regulated. That means that it becomes yet another reason that mega-corporations take over. They can absorb these costs. Their bottom line may be affected, but it's merely a percentage. On a small farn that same percentage might be a significant portion of whatever small profits that they eke out. Small farms are *not* efficient, anyone who understands economics should know that. They provide some advantages, but many of those advantages (like a free and hard working population who are landowners) are intangibles that no one really factors in.

I used to drive out to farms when I worked with my grandfather, who sold goods to farmers. Many people here would be shocked by what I saw in terms of the sacrifices that these people have to make to simply do what their families have been doing for centuries. These are people who don't need something else on their backs making their life even harder. Not if we don't want to see them or their children sell out to the agribusiness and move away.

People think that all of these programs are no-brainers because "of course we want to track every animal to prevent CJ disease", but take a look at who is doing that work before you call it a win. Some of you are effectively calling some of the hardest working people on Earth "lazy" or "greedy". The concept of people sitting in their ergonomic chairs and making those sorts of statements sickens me from the pure ignorance that it represents.

I understand what you are trying to say but you are misunderstanding the actual situation. The time and cost/animal to tag will be fairly uniform. Yeah the large operation may be able to buy tags for less/tag but the difference will be relatively minor. Especially since the smaller operations are already paying more for just about all of the input costs per animal.

Their point is only valid if you truely believe that there is some sort of benefit to society in their running a less efficient operation. L

Nothing ever changes. This is the exact argument that they made in the 1900's when the FDA was first trying to reduce the number of human body parts that made it into canned meat: "Waaaaaa, you're going to put us out of business! Waaaaaaaa, no one could ever collect this much information!"

Lol, this is exactly what I was talking about; see my post right below yours. I've been sitting in on lectures on the Progressive Era for the last two weeks, and the fact that the large meatpacking companies supported the

I call BS. If I stole a cow from one of those giant farms, the damn rancher'd be able to identify it in a second, but the instant you want to track something for public safety reasons, "there is no way they could ever collect that information."

I call BS on your BS. If we were talking about corporate feed lots it would be one thing, but a very significant percentage of the US beef herd is raised by independent cattle producers on open range in very sparsely populated country. It can take months to find all of your cattle to tag them in the first place, so it is very easy to "lose" cattle without noticing. In fact, the law in the ranching areas I am familiar with is that you only have rights to your free-range cattle if you can find and tag them within the first year after birth, after which they enter the public domain (first person to tag them owns them). It is not at all uncommon for me to find a rancher's untagged cattle in one of my canyons.

Beef ranching in the western US does not work the way you think it does. Much of the basic logistics of it have not changed much since the 19th century.

I fail to see why a small operation should be allowed to opt out of health and safety regulations that everyone else is required to obey. You are apparently one of those (in my option misguided) people that confuse the freshness of locally grown food with being healthier & safer. It's ok, my mother is as well.

I don't know how things are run in Australia, but I've worked at small dairy farms in Massachusetts and Connecticut (Largest farm milked 110 cows at a time and the smallest milked ~25), and I ca

From the summary: "'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen"

It's true. When The Jungle was published, TR responded with the Pure Food and Drug Act, which regulated and inspected meat packing plants (he also went vegetarian for a little while, which, if you know TR, shows you how much he was affected by Sinclair's book).

Contrary to what many people might think, the large meat companies supported the act. It 1) Improved public perception of the safety of meat, increasing sales, 2) Opened up American meats to the European market and 3) Added significant costs to the industry, which put their smaller competitors out of business.

It 1) Improved public perception of the safety of meat, increasing sales,

Forget perception. It improved the safety, and quality, of meat full stop.

The reality is that the food industry as a whole needs these regulations. Left to their own devices, food producers will quite happily sell us sawdust and animal faeces to eat, feed dead cows to other cows, and buy, sell and slaughter sick, dying and dead animals that have been hauled across continents. All for a few pennies extra.

Ok, where to start. Before addressing individual points. Anyone that uses words like "Poisonous Air" and "Super-incubators for viruses" is spreading FUD. No two ways about it. They have a political agenda, whether they admit it or not, and are obviously biased. The fact that you either were unwilling, unable to see that bias is rather frightening, but not uncommon. Now for your individual points.

Nutritionists can tell you (in fact one is right now) that the feeding of animal byproducts to other animals is routine. Dog food contains meat, as does chicken, and the meat in question is not the top cuts I can assure you. The cattle got BSE from eating rendered sheep byproducts, not other cattle. Sheep have a prion disease know as Scrapie, which in the >200 years that we've known about it has never before jumped from one species to another. In fact, disease transmission by protein, as opposed to bacteria, virus, or fungi was only discovered with the isolation of the prion protein involved in both diseases. This discovery was as almost as revolutionary as germ theory itself. You cannot reasonably expect people to predict that which has never happened before will suddenly happen.

There is no "Flu epidemic" in north america. The flu occasionally affects some herds, but in the 7 years I've been working where I have, we've only seen the flu once. It was not the "Swine Flu" that the media was losing their mind about either, it was H5N4 IIRC. AFAIK, there hasn't been a single case of the so called "Swine Flu" (ie H1N1) in any pigs north of the US, Mexican border. The disease was transmitted out of Mexico by Human-to-human contact. Honestly, how many people do you really believe bring their pigs with them when they travel to Europe, Australia and Asia when leaving Mexico?

Also, if barns were as bad as your obviously biased reference states, then the first farmer to turn on the god damn FAN would seen incredible improvements in health and production and put the rest of the industry out of business nearly over night. Pigs are mammals, just like us. If they cannot breathe or are surrounded by toxins all the time, then they won't grow. They'll end up dying before they get to market, and no one will make any money. Why people such as yourself are willing to believe that animals will somehow grow in conditions that are toxic to them is beyond me. Do you not understand basic fucking biology? If you'd ever have taken a swine management class (as I have) you'd know just how much time is devoted to teach how to calculate the necessary air exchange rates based on season, flooring style, square feet/pig and building style. We had a whole exam on that.

And before you go trotting out the old "Antibiotics" meme, stop right there. The only place I've seen antibiotics fed to pigs on a routine basis is in the weaning barn. weaning is very stressful for pigs, they are moving from a mostly sterile, liquid diet with highly digestible proteins and energy derived primarily from lipids to a diet that is no more sterile than the grass in your back yard, solid, containing a fair amount of indigestible proteins, and with energy derived primarily from carbohydrates. This causes the animal to switch both his internal digestive mechanisms, and deal with a sudden switch in the enteral bacteria colonizing the small and large intestine. All the antibiotics do is knock down the bad bugs long enough for him to make the transition smoothly and then are removed from the diet. Antibiotics are expensive and a small, sub-therapeutic does in the weanling diets will often prevent the need to use much larger therapeutic doses for a much longer period of time if the E. coli gets away from them and causes an outbreak of scours (diarrhea). Prior to the use of antibiotics in weanling diets, losses at this point were much higher than they are now, in fact we've never had higher weaning percentages before.

The USDA has NEVER labeled pigs that eat pigs as safe. The reason is Trichin

Our company makes RFID equipment specifically for this industry.Contrary to your view of 'putting small producers out of business' is not the case.Producers who do not have RFID equipment, either have freelance scanners, or the anmimals are scanned at the sale yards.The equipment is reltively cheap for small producers (ie the hand held readers) and access to the database industry paid for.So it adds a couple of $ overhead. If their margins are that small, then they shouldn't be in the business.

The cost of the rfids would be practically nothing. They have to give them their shots anyway (mmmmm, tasty growth hormone), so that's just one more.

The movement issue is more real, because the range on the readers is tiny, but we've all seen lab experiments where hackers read an rfid enabled card from 200 feet away with a cantenna, so I'm not inclined to believe this to be an unsolvable problem.

And the internet thing is a joke. The amount of actual data collected would be pretty small (in the grand scheme). Uploading it every week or so wouldn't be a huge burden.

Yep, a reader mounted to where the cattle passes by as gthey load it onto the truck and an access database could easily do this from anyone with less then 200 head.

The data could be uploaded with a dial up connection in minutes. Is that too much? fine next time you drive to town use the connection at the library, or get together with all the ranchers and donate a 1 Mbit line to city hall, with he provision they get a terminal to themselves so there isn't a line to upload the data. Still too much? fine, use

What if "updating every week or so" meant driving 40 miles into town, one way, to use someone elses Internet connection? Now what if it's a verified blizzard outside with temperatures of 0F, 50MPH winds, and 10" of snow on the ground? What if your wife and kids are sick and there's no one else to get the chores done or help them out while you drive your happy butt 40 miles through a blizzard to send the government some bullshit data that the cattle ranchers in China don't?

My point is this, don't automatically assume an Internet connection is convenient or even available.

You likely live in an urban area and have no concept of how much free space there are in some of these cattle herding states. Like most people you're unable to step outside your own life experience and imagine the difficulties that someone else would have.

My next question is are we going to demand this for all IMPORTERS of beef or is this a burden that only good 'ol U.S. Ranchers are going to have to bear?

You do realize that this is terribly inaccurate, right? The movements that this sort of thing is tracking aren't within a lot, trust me if one corner of the lot is contaminated all the cattle in the lot are likely to be put down. This is about tracking cows as they go from lot to lot and in that context what you're arguing makes absolutely no sense.

A huge amount of damage was done to the US beef industry when a small number of cows were fed in Canada. It turned out that those particular cows were fed con

bullshit sob story. I have plenty of relatives with livestock. they all without exception have working POTS lines. even at 14.4K the very minute amount of data to be uploaded would go in less than a minute. internet for text is available everywhere, even on the lazy-R ranch.

Technology isn't an issue on this. Depending on what RFID technology is used, read range wouldn't be an issue. Since cattle life is relatively short, active tags can be used which also address some of the concerns of a single person taking the readings. Also readers can be attached to a trailer, punch a button and read all tags within range (which can be large or small).

Uploading data, you are right, it is very small. A few hundred bits per cow is all that would be needed. Even a old 300 baud modem co

Uploading data, you are right, it is very small. A few hundred bits per cow is all that would be needed. Even a old 300 baud modem could upload all the data relatively quickly.

Except that this is a government program, so rather than a simple data format, tailored to the job, it will be WTF worthy XML from hell that has a 200:1 ratio of formatting overhead and spurious data that could be sent once and stored at the server, but will be sent every time. Further, rather than lumping the data like so:

The difference is that if a person contracts a disease that is a public health risk, the person is generally able to tell physicians who he/she might have had contact with so that person can get treatment, possibily saving their life and slowing the disease spread. Cows can't tell investigators where they have been and who should be notified.

Regarding the cost, I can't imagine that this would be more expensive that the cost of destroying entire herds of cattle when one cow comes down with a confirmed or probable case of these diseases. Being able to isolate the infected could decrease the numbers needed to be destoyed saving money. The difference is that farms can claim the loss of the animal in insurance which is a sunk cost, versus a preventative cost. This would save money upstream as well in the form of smaller recalls to distributors, which seem to happen more and more frequently in the US.

Internet access isn't a good excuse as a low-bandwidth cellular scanner would be enough to report via SOAP web-service to whatever database; not to mention that every industry has costs-of-doing-business and this will/could be one of those things.

I haven't read enough to comment on the implementation of this plan but on the surface, I can't see why this wouldn't be a good idea from a public health perspective.

Regarding the cost, I can't imagine that this would be more expensive that the cost of destroying entire herds of cattle when one cow comes down with a confirmed or probable case of these diseases.

Its a risk many would prefer to take though. There is only a tiny risk that this might happen. On the other hand, for every cow you have you would need a microchip which would add a ton of costs. For a mega-farm this makes sense, for the average small rancher with 50 or so head of cattle, this only will send them into bankruptcy.

Well, would you rather risk a one-in-a-million shot of losing one million dollars, or be forced to spend $100,000 to (maybe) avoid it?

What if either amount would put you out of business?

Furthermore, its not just the chip. The chip, the cost to implant the chip, the time to read the chip however often is required, the time and cost to store/upload the data, the internet connection, the computer, etc.

Isn't this skirting the issue though? The solution to Mad Cow disease should be having regulations against having spinal meat being processed and sold to consumers. Granted being able to eradicate sick cows is a bonus, taking simple measures in how we process are meat solves the most serious problem.

O.K - having just returned from my vacation in Oregon "cow country" (prospecting for sunstones), I can clue you in on what's wrong with your world view.

Having looked at the program - the information they are trying to gain is - where has the cow been, and what other livestock has it associated with. This means that you have to read the chip and report, every time an animal is moved. It may happen more frequently, but moves would happen at least from high to low pastures and back - because of the weather.

So you have lots of reads, sometimes on small numbers of cattle. For the collected information to be useful it's got to be timely. Most people don't appreciate the scale of even eastern Oregon (much less New Mexico - I've lived in both). This leads up to the next problem -

THERE IS NO CELLULAR ACCESS - there isn't cell access for 100 miles in any direction from where I was. Heck, even the 162.XX weather radio was inaudable (I'm a ham, too) So much for your "low cost cellular scanner". Sat Radio would work - know what an irridium set with data costs? Not cheap, and every hand moving cattle has to have one.

Basically, it's clear that this rule was proposed by people who don't have a clear picture of the area they are asking this to be applied to - much less of the processes of the people who would actually do it.

I could take you to 25 different places on ranches I know of right now where your low-bandwidth cellular scanner would be as useful as lipstick on a pig.

You obviously don't spend much time outside in "Big Sky" states or you'd know better than to propose cellular ANYTHING as a communications solution. Cell phones flat don't work in much of the back country and the back country is where you tend to find a lot of cattle.

Internet access isn't a good excuse as a low-bandwidth cellular scanner would be enough to report via SOAP web-service to whatever database; not to mention that every industry has costs-of-doing-business and this will/could be one of those things.

You assume far too much, out in the western US ranch country there is usually no communication services of any kind. I have a small (a few square kilometers) ranch in Nevada that is 20 miles from the next ranch (never mind a road), typical for western ranching operations. I get cellular reception -- one bar -- if I climb to the peak of the adjacent mountain, that several thousand extra feet gives me line-of-sight to an area near an Interstate highway 30-40 miles away.

There seems to be a presumption (1) that western ranches are the size of hobby farms, (2) that they are located anywhere near infrastructure, and (3) that free-range cattle is a tidy local pasture-and-barn affair instead of a horseback operation in remote canyons. In many parts of the western ranching areas, you don't even locate all of your cattle for the better part of a year.

You need to learn how to do a cost benefit analysis. There have only ever been 3 cases of mad cow disease in cows (1 of which was imported from Canada), and 3 in people (one of which contracted the disease while living in Saudi Arabia) in the United States since 1993. There were 104.8 Million head of cattle in the United States on July 1, 2007. So by your estimate, it will only cost $15.7B upfront, then another $15.7B every year. That's the equivalent of spending almost $84B per diseased cow, quite unnecessarily, since we're only detecting, on average, one diseased cow every 64 months. It makes no sense to piss away over $170B over the next 10 years when current measures are already effective.

Ha! As if. Look, we grant cattle no rights, so it's not infringing their rights to have them be tracked. So it's a far step from there to tracking humans. It's like saying "Squashing spiders with slippers today, squashing people with slippers soon'. It's nonsensical. Besides, the reason cows have no rights is because they aren't capable of even thinking about the concept of rights much less engaging in protests etc to gain them. So not only are they different morally, they're different practically because it's not like the government could just come and start tracking us all without us noticing and burning down the Capitol.

Hmm? What do you mean "what's that hanging from my ear?" Some piece of plastic with a number on it? Well so there is! Geeze, I don't remember getting my ear pierced, but I did get pretty drunk last Friday... I remember somebody in a suit pointing at me and then I felt like I wanted to lie down... But I must have gone into the tattoo and piercing parlor and gotten pierced. With a tacky and crappy earring too, that doesn't seem to want to come off... I hope I didn't get tattooed too... Oh geeze, what the hell?! "19273g"? What the hell kind of tattoo is that? Alright that's it, no more Friday night benders for me.

The issues of tracking cattle are going to be similar to tracking humans. They will learn from this project, so that the one that gets deployed on us will be much less error prone. In fact, people are probably easier to model (very habitual as everyone has a schedule for themselves) whereas a herd has a less rigid schedule.

I wouldn't even call this a slippery slope. This is a stepping stone. It would only be a slippery slope if the lessons learned did not have any applicability to humans. But they do.

First they came for the cattle, and I said nothing, for I was not cattle.
Then they came for the ducks, and I said nothing, for I eat not ducks.
Then they came for the spinach and I said nothing, as long as I get some.

Seriously, that last sentence of your post is somewhat ironic considering your sig. It's also kind of pathetic that we even need to consider this in any sort of paranoia context, instead of considering the cost/benefit side of things, since that's what it really comes down to. I have no id

There are so many ways you are being tracked already, the 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon" fear isn't paranoia, it's whistling in the dark. This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with privacy issues. It is a purely industrial matter. Both agribusiness and small farmers are whining about something that will increase their costs. That's all. Will it put anyone out of business? No, unless they sell less than a few tens of cows a year, in which case they might be better off leaving the business on that

There are so many ways you are being tracked already, the 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon" fear isn't paranoia, it's whistling in the dark.

Well there's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you can only do what you know how to do well -- and that's be you! Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.

Don't you realize that every violation of rights starts really really small?

Aside from the fact that my post entire post was essentially a set up for a gag involving people being tranqed and tagged on the street, I was serious when I said this isn't a violation of rights of any kind whatsoever. They're cows. Making them trackable is no more a violation of rights than zoologists tagging birds to track migrations and populations like they've been doing for a long time now. It's nothing like tracking people. And the "right" of the rancher to sell unregulated meat was lost a long time ago, thank goodness, because I'd like to have more assurance that I'm not going to get sick eating some beef than a Consumer Reports grade or a complaint-ridden web forum.

Don't chip your cows. But when the EU, Japan or China bans US beef, don't expect me to back up your complaining. I'm siding with them. And if my supermarket carries beef or food with beef by-products warranted as having been tracked vs untracked varieties, guess which brand I'm buying?

In this case the farmers are right. The cattle are branded with a unique brand so the rancher knows who it belongs to. In addition, cattle are given an eartag so that the slaughter houses can tell where they came from. Cattle comes from two sources...large industrial like feedlots where the cattle are crowded into a small area and fed grain...or on ranches where they go free range and graze on grasses. Since a large operation would have maybe 1000 head of cattle, it can be presumed that from the ear tags, if a slaughtered cow is found to have some disease at the slaughter house, it can be narrowed down to one ranch or feed lot.

Now, because of the close confines of the feedlot, it can easily be presumed that the sick cow came into close proximity with all the other cattle there. And so the new technology is just simply not needed, it's a wasteful expense.

For the rancher, equiping each of his hands with a scanner gets expensive. The data is instantly intrusive, as in "why didn't you pasture your cows this way" and in some instances could easily be used by overzealous groups (ie peta) to grief ranchers about their animal husbandry practices.

All in all, it's a lot of expense, a lot of trouble, and a lot of intrusion, for very little is actual gain. In the efforts at finding disease, relying on this system alone to reduce the number of animals tested could mean that positives slip by because they weren't tested as they didn't show up in the contact list for the sick cow.

They're hemming and hawing about the costs? It's about $6 per tag today. Economy of scale could drive that a lot lower. And the tags can be removed and recycled into a new animal (betcha didn't know that!) -- after being properly sterilized, of course. They last about a 100+ years. The reader itself, as a handheld model runs anywhere from $150 to $1000 depending on range and other options. It's not necessary for it to connect to the internet or anything like that -- and the amount of data we're talking about could be handled via a 9600 baud modem! It's just a serial number for crissakes. Yes, farmers have teh intarwebs too. -_-

Each beef cow is worth about $800. Assuming 10% of the chips need to be replaced per... that's 60 cents. For something worth $800. The overhead here really is negligible, especially for a CAFO. That's an industrial feed lot, for those of you who don't know -- they're fed corn and kept in stalls, not grass-fed and left in fields. And did I mention it's all tax-deductible? Most everything on a farm is. Well, except you, that is. hehe.

So, in short... It's bull. Literally and figuratively.//Disclaimers: I have five dots in Lore:Rural. I am also a computer geek.

I talked recently to a small farmer with a few cows. They are already required to document entry and exit of cattle into and out of each county. Since their farm has multiple fields which are in two separate counties, they are required to submit this documentation each time they move an animal between the two fields. Which is of course stupid, but the regulations were designed without any consideration for a split-county operation like this.

This person has maybe 20 head, total. With the existing regulations it is almost too much to bother with. Adding more tracking, with more hardware requirements and obviously training for all hands involved it is going to be impractical for them to continue.

Yes, there were some feed problems for cows. Most of these problems have been identified and dealt with. I suspect there are still a few, but nothing that is going to create anything like the mad cow panic. Piling more and more regulation, especially regulation that is not focused on real problems buy imaginary ones, will simply mean that all cattle are raised by factory farms.

(Speaking as someone who comes from a long line of Australian farmers, has two dozen blood relatives on farms and knows pepole in every aspect of food production...you don't know much).

My uncle who had 500 head of free roaming grass fed Herefords on 2000 acres (Beef, Grain and Sheep) out in the Riverina sold all of his cattle rather than take on the extra burden of paperwork, large amount of labour and cost associated with complying with the NLIS.

He sold them to a feedlot that's part owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation.

He was not alone in his district.

SoA) You're wrong they didn't *get over it* it's hurting people who aren't in a position to just sell a huge part of their operation at a loss.B) Feedlots loved the regulation as it's far easier to tag 500 head crammed into a few large sheds than 500 head wandering around 2000 acres. They know that and enjoy the benefit of not being burdened by that.C) Given that you work in one of the largest meatoworks in Australia WTF would you know about small farmers?

If Australian cattle farmers, including the operators of the 6,000,000 acre Anna Creek Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station) in South Australia can implement tagging of all of their cattle, why can't you Americans just do it as well, instead of whining?
I take it the US won't be complaining when Japan, Korea and the European Union don't want to buy their untraceable beef.
(http://www.mla.com.au/TopicHierarchy/IndustryPrograms/NationalLivestockIdentificationSystem/default.htm)

That program sounds fantastic to me. And this opinion is not influenced at all [legalcasedocs.com] by the beef industry.

I might say that maybe we should just start by making it illegal to feed animals (especially old/diseased animals) to herbivore livestock. Or maybe make antibiotic feed illegal. Maybe just require labeling of if you use antibiotics or GE meat.

Try substituting $STUPID_EXAMPLE with any other RFIDed product or item currently on the market at WalMart, at the local mall, at the airport, etc. Pretty stupid-sounding, eh? This has absolutely nothing to do with privacy rights, Big Brother, armageddon, etc. It is a cost benefit issue only!

When ya get a few thousand cows stomping around in their shit all day long eating things they were never meant to eat and getting injected with cocktails of chemicals.. tracking them really doesn't seem like the problem to me..

I got a good laugh at "They don't understand the vastness of" the postage stamps you guys call "cattle ranches" over there.Australia introduced NLIS a few years ago now, and it is going well. And we have cattle stations larger than Texas.

Perhaps you should move to a tyrannical government where they don't even act like they listen to the people and if your business gets hurt they don't care. Perhaps Iran or North Korea? Plus, if you don't like it you can choose not to support the meat industry its not like people are shoving steaks down your throat. If you want to be a vegetarian or vegan, fine, but you have no right to deprive people of their living just because you dislike it.

Since the USDA is also subsidizing corn, soy, wheat, oats, etc. I don't think it matters that you don't eat one class of food subsidized by the USDA. Vegetarians might not like that the animal meat industry is getting handouts from the USDA, but I'm not all that excited about the USDA making Soy cheaper for Tofu manufacturers so it all comes out in the wash.

You are an idiot who can't even RTFS. This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting the large-scale industry that you abhor.

You are an idiot who can't even RTFS. This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting the large-scale industry that you abhor.

Actually, there are very few small sustainable ranchers that are teetering on the edge of being able to compete. Most of them have either sold out to the big cattle companies long ago (because they essentially were forced out of business) or they have moved into niche markets.

The "small rancher" is a myth, just like the "family farm". The corporate cattle ranches and corporate farms have a ton of clout and have essentially manipulated the laws to benefit their assembly-line methods of prod

On what grounds do you say something so daft? Living in Georgia, I get all of my buffalo meat from a rancher with thirty head of buffalo in exchange for a little computer work every couple of weeks. If he offers beef, sometimes I'll take a little longhorn. Another friend gives me angus by the truckload because his parents have a small farm in Tennessee with a few dozen cattle. I know a lot of people with small active farms and ranches and do not personally know anyone who works for one of the big outfits. When I was a kid, we had a few hundred head of holsteins on our farm and were able to break even with milk sales. The truck came by from farm to farm to farm to fill up at these little dairies. Corporate "farming" may be the mainstay of our food supply, especially in the poultry industry, but please do not be so ignorant about this. The buffalo rancher was breaking even at $2.50/pound for ground bison but with the USDA inspection, he already has to mark it up to $4.00/pound after taking into consideration both inspection and transportation. Any such regulation on cattle does hurt the small man because not only does he not own his own slaughterhouse, but he has to transport his cattle elsewhere and has to deal with a lot more overhead per capita than the corporation.

Besides being one step away from tagging humans--say prisoners guilty of certain crimes--this program would unquestionably harm the many small farms out there.

I grew up on a small cattle farm, so I know what I'm talking about. You absolutely have to sterilize young bulls, or they'll challenge the older bulls, and you'll wind up with a bloody bullpen instead of a lot of happy, complaining cows. So that's 50% of each year's herd you have to spend at least 15 seconds of...intensely personal time with anyway.

Secondly, cows aren't cats, but if one person is herding a small group of cattle then he's doing it through a chute or with a small bucket of feed. Again, this is completely not a problem.

Small cattle ranches obey Sturgeon's Law exactly like any other small groups. They whiners are just complaining because they aren't going to be able to hide downer cows or sell the sick ones before anybody notices. (Which, by the way, is one reason we raised our own, until my brother and I went to college and there was no more farm help.)

If I were still on my parents' farm, I'd welcome this move 100%, even restricted to the 28.8Kbps modem my parents still use.

My understanding is that the current plan is to allow large corporate operations, that move large numbers of animals around at a time, to identify them as a "unit" While smaller farmers who don't source from a single location, nor sell to a single location will be required to chip each animal. This is one advantage this gives the corporate process.
Add in the registration process and all the various laws and fees that are sure to accompany the process, and its probably going to place a pretty hefty and disproportionate burden on the small farmer who has only a few critters. (or at least that is their fear) For example a $500 fee to register a property probably wouldn't phase a large corporate operation, but the guy who sells me my eggs and has only a dozen chickens probably isn't going to pony up the $500.
Personally I think a good look at many of the large corporations that handle our food, and the type of hardball they can and do play, make Micro$oft look pretty warm and fuzzy.

FUCK YOU. I abhor your fucking vegetarians industry. Dumb fucks. Plants are living things too. Why stop there then?
Nothing, and I mean nothing, not even religious zealots, piss me off more than vegetarians.
EAT MOAR CHIKUN bitches.
And before you mod this TROLL, read what I'm saying. Its true.

I say let it go down. Regulate them into the dust. (Full disclosure, I abhor the meat industry.)

It's fair to have that opinion, but you do realize that a LARGE part of the economy is dependant on cattle. If you think the economy sucks now, let the "meat industry" (including dairy, fast food, grocery stores and numerous other) die.

Even if it all doesn't fall down like dominoes (and it would), you're talking about a lot of people losing their jobs, most of the physical area of the US falling into economic decay. Maybe you didn't mean to flamebait, but geez, what you're talking about is pretty terrible stuff in reality.

I say let it go down. Regulate them into the dust.(Full disclosure, I abhor the meat industry.)

While the meat industry, and food industry in general, is guilty of a swathe of scandals, it's important to remember that without that industry, few of us would eat as well as we do.

If we want to have cheap, (reasonably) nutritious food, then some policies of the food industry are going to have to be tolerated to a certain degree. This doesn't mean we should accept all of the repulsive practices that the industry

There is no way an RFID costs $50. Fifty cents, maybe. Besides, cows are all ear tagged now anyways, so it's really a matter of shifting the cost from an ear tag to an RFID. In other words, apart from the reader there would be no net change of cost. The only people whose way of life this might ruin would be the Mennonite/Amish.

Except that a 30 cent RFID doesn't add much to the total cost of cattle. Combined that with the fact that buying in quantities of a thousand you can even pay significantly less. RFID readers aren't that expensive either as a small farm would only need one or two readers. In the grand scheme of things this would only be expensive to implement if it was implemented extremely poorly but the argument isn't based on that presumption, it's based on the cost factor.

Even assuming just expensive SSDs in your analogy (rather than dirt cheap flash). your $50 notional device is going to be at least 50% of the cost of the thing it's tagging.

Were this the case with beef cattle in the US you'd be talking a tag that cost around $45/cwt - or say in the region of $300. In reality these things cost as little as $1. Government mandated massive deployment would likely force the price down further.

I mean since everyone seems to not know this mad cow disease is actually extremely rare. So rare that there are no known cases being caused by US, New Zealand, Canadian, or Australian beef the last time I checked.(Mostly because it's so cheap to feed cows here in the US corn and grass, beef producers generally don't bother feeding them that ground up animal garbage or if they do only at the very end. Outlaw that practice and you wouldn't have to worry.)